WASHINGTON D.C. — In a significant and long-overdue reversal, the American Association of Plastic Surgeons and the American Medical Association have concurred with what Independent Women has been sounding the alarm on all along—that pediatric gender surgeries should not be a common procedure offered to minors and should never have been normalized as “care.” 

This shift marks a decisive break from years of ideological medicine—and a turning point towards biological reality, medical ethics, and the protection of children from body mutilation and irreversible harm.

The announcement comes on the heels of a landmark detransitioner legal victory. Just days ago, detransitioner Fox Varian secured a $2 million settlement in New York after suing her practitioners, who had allegedly groomed her as a vulnerable teen into thinking her mental distress was due to gender dysphoria. The case signals what many have long predicted: the reckoning over pediatric gender medicine will ultimately be settled in the courts. 

Independent Women’s ambassador program has played an important role in elevating the stories and voices of detransitioners—young people who were misled by then-trusted medical professionals into undergoing life-altering interventions to appear as the opposite sex, and who now grapple with the physical and psychological consequences and complications of these medical decisions every single day. 

Independent Women Detransitioner Ambassadors React:

Prisha Mosley: “Finally having a medical body that speaks against the harm that’s been pushed onto society through medicine is a relief for detransitioners like me. I don’t want to see any other young person suffer needlessly at the reckless recommendation for surgery on healthy body parts.”

Claire Abernathy: “I lost my breasts at 14 to a medical system that insisted the science was settled. The ASPS and AMA’s recent admissions that pediatric transition surgeries lack evidentiary support make clear that the warnings detransitioners have been giving for years now have been justified all along: there is no evidentiary backing for these surgeries. Kids like me were irreversibly harmed because of our medical system’s refusal to say ‘we don’t know.’”

Soren Aldaco: “The change in recommendations by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons is a sure sign that the tide is turning. I’m not surprised that their February 3rd statement follows detransitioner Fox Varian’s $2 million win against her medical providers on January 30th. We’ve been saying for so long that the real battle over gender ideology will be fought in the courts. It’s obvious now that the public, even in a blue state such as New York, cannot suspend belief in reality when it is clear a child has been harmed. That said, I do not think what the ASPS calls for is enough. I was freshly 19 when I underwent my own “gender-affirming” mastectomy—less than a month after my 19th birthday. Fact is, the ethical risk outlined by the ASPS does not stop at any age, let alone as the brain is still rapidly developing. I am glad to see an American medical association facing reality and taking action. But let’s not be confused—we still have a long, long way to go.”

Luke Healy: “For many years, a radical and corrupt medical establishment has foisted lie after lie upon our nation, including that the maiming and Frankenstein-like reassembly of organs makes them into the organs or features of the opposite sex. The human heart and the human mind know for certain that these results are nothing more than godless and foul mockeries of the wonderful creations inherent to man and woman, and that to pursue them on our children, especially, is nothing more than barbarity.”

As ambassadors for Independent Women, Prisha Mosley, Claire Abernathy, Soren Aldaco, and Luke Healy have a national platform to share their stories before lawmakers and in the media, helping fuel the momentum across the country to end this harm to children. 

BACKGROUND:

In December, Independent Women applauded the Department of Health and Human Services for proposing several policy positions by moving to bar hospitals from performing sex-rejecting procedures on minors as a condition of participation in Medicare and Medicaid, carrying out President Trump’s executive order to end the surgical and chemical mutilation of minors.

Last summer, several of the detransitioners spoke at the Federal Trade Commission’s workshop, titled “The Dangers of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors,” held in Washington, D.C.  The workshop aimed to shed light on the serious risks and false claims regarding so-called “gender-affirming care” and its harmful effects on consumers—particularly children.

LEFT: Prisha Mosley, Independent Women ambassador and detransitioner

RIGHT: Mosley joined by other detransitioners for the FTC workshop, “The Dangers of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors”

Since 2022, Independent Women’s Features (IW Features), the grassroots storytelling and original journalism arm of Independent Women, has worked to expose the irreversible harm of so-called “gender-affirming care” through its “Identity Crisis: Real Stories About Escaping Gender Ideology” series. 

From “top surgery,” nipples peeling off, clitoral growth, trapped milk ducts, and hairy bodies, Identity Crisis documentaries bring to light the graphic stories of young adults now reckoning with the physical and emotional scars of gender ideology:

Direct media inquiries and booking requests to [email protected] 

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